When Caesar following the track of Pompeius arrived in the roadstead
of Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation
he turned away when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man,
who had been his son-in-law and for long years his colleague
in rule, and to get whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt.
The dagger of the rash assassin precluded an answer to the question,
how Caesar would have dealt with the captive Pompeius; but, while
the humane sympathy, which still found a place in the great soul
of Caesar side by side with ambition, enjoined that he should
spare his former friend, his interest also required that he should
annihilate Pompeius otherwise than by the executioner.

Pompeius had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler
of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted does not perish
with the ruler's death. The death of Pompeius did not break up
the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable,
and worn-out chief in his sons Gnaeus and Sextus two leaders,
both of whom were young and active and the second was a man
of decided capacity. To the newly-founded hereditary monarchy
hereditary pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite,
and it was very doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar
did not lose more than he gained.